Continuing development of my Elastic Creative project I’ve managed to narrow the whole brainstorm down to two main ideas. Last blog post I spoke a lot about an ‘unbranding’ idea, which I still think would be cool, but after a quick search on Behance it feels like it’s already been done in a variety of really cool ways. Here’s the first of the two main ideas I’ll be pitching to Elastic.

This first concept is purely a print project. Design companies are accustomed to presenting clients with design proposals but this concept precludes such a document. Typically this print pack would be sent to potential clients that a design studio is trying to woo or feels is a good lead for their next big project. It’s a convincer, to give the client that last push to put their money towards design.

The central idea of the pack is a challenge – put your money where your mouth is. It’s a challenge and a representation of spending money on your business’s communication. The pack would centre around a small booklet containing empty infographics all related to the client’s needs. The idea is that over the course of a project the client would complete the infographics with their own data of the success of what benefits they have reaped since the design work’s implementation.

A mock-up of the booklet’s contents, with a client’s drawn in infographics.

This pack would be given a bold, challenging personality and writing style, This is the studio saying “design is worth the investment. We’ll prove it.” This bold attitude would be matched with a scientific approach to aesthetic, to reassure clients that design is not a risk, when in the hands of experts it comes close to science.

Design writer Adrian Shaughnessy talks about when branding came into prominence that clients preferred it to design, as it was something that could be given value on a balance sheet, brand value was a definitive value you could place on a piece of design work. It was almost an exact science and clients found this reassuring.

The pre-hiring pack opened to reveal the booklet.

The pack itself would include the main infographics booklet, typically tailored to the industry or needs of the client and what they are hoping to achieve not just with design, but as a business. This could cover a wide range of areas, such as increased sales, selling more to certain types of customer or more abstract things like happier employees. The pack would also contain a large format poster which would fold out to become a progress chart. Additionally the pack would come with pencils for the filling in of details, plus contact cards, as a further prompt for the client to pick up the phone and call the studio.

Regardless of whether the client decided to go ahead with the research to fill in these empty infographics this is still a strong message to the client, of utter confidence in design’s potential. The mission of this pack isn’t to measure ROI (though it can serve that purpose) but to show the unwavering confidence of the studio sending such a package. All of this would hopefully be screen-printed, or at least digitally printed onto a very nice stock of paper.

This is the first concept I developed, but currently I’m preferring how the second concept is turning out. So I might not present this particular idea in great depth. Less depth than the 600 words I’ve squished into this blog post at least. Oops. Bring on that 6000 word market research report, amirite?!